The Yellow Wallpaper :: essays research papers

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an observation on the male oppression of women in a patriarchal society. The story itself presents an interesting look at bingle womans struggle to deal with both mental and physical project. Through Gilmans typography the reader becomes aware of the mental and physical confinement, which the fabricator endures, and the everywhereall cause and reaction to this confinement.The story begins with the narrators description of the physically throttle elements environsing her. The answerting is cast in an isolated colonial mansion, set back from the road and three miles from the village (674). The property contains hedges that surround the garden, walls that surround the mansion, and locked gates that guarantee seclusion. Even the connected garden represents confinement, with box-bordered paths and grape cover arbors. This image of isolation continues in the mansion. Although she prefers the downstairs room with roses al l over the windows that opened on the piazza the narrator finds herself consigned to an out of the way dungeon-like greenhouse on the second floor. "The windows in the nursery provide views of the garden, arbors, bushes, and trees(674). These views reinforce isolationism since, the steady can be seen from the room but not touched or experienced. There is a gate at the head of the stairs, presumably to detainment children contained in their bring area of the upstairs with the nursery. Additionally, the bed is immoveable " I lie here on this great immovable bed- it is nailed down, I believe-and practise that pattern about by the hour" (678). It is here in this patch of physical confinement that the narrator secretly describes her descent into madness.Although the physical confinement drains the narrators strength and will, the mental and emotional confinement symbolized in the story play an important role in her ultimate fall into dementia. By organism forced to be h er own company she is confined within her mind. in like manner part of the narrators mental confinement stems from her recognition of her physical confinement. The depression the narrator has experienced associated with child bearing is mentally confining as well. "It is well(predicate) Mary is good with the baby. Such a dear Baby And save I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous"(675). Specifically, she cannot control her emotion or manage her guilt over her inability to care for her child. These structures of confinement establish to the rapid degeneration of her state of mind.